Fast Friends

by Jill Mansell

  “I’m sorry?” said Camilla, dismayed. What was going on? He had been silent, listening with apparent absorption while she told him about Zoë and her daughters, and now he was canceling the assignment? “But you didn’t even see all of them. Have another look…” Embarrassed, as appalled as if he had said “Your baby is ugly,” she pushed the album back toward him, almost toppling over his wineglass as she flipped open the cover.

  “See, that’s Daisy, one of our most popular models. She’s just completed a photo assignment for Vogue; she’s done TV commercials, catwalk…”

  “But I don’t want a catwalk model,” he intercepted, moving the wineglasses out of danger. “I want ‘a date.’ It’s practically mandatory, Camilla; all the other guys will be there with their wives or girlfriends—maybe both,” he added with a wink, “and I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to ask. You can’t just pick anybody, so I decided to go to the professionals and hire someone for the day; that way, at least I know I won’t have any hassle afterward. Doesn’t that make good sense?”

  “It makes sense,” said Camilla with the slightest touch of annoyance, “but I still don’t understand why none of our models are good enough for you. Look here, at Miranda… She speaks four languages and she’s beautiful…”

  As her trembling fingers struggled to turn the pages of the album, Matt’s hand reached out and grabbed them. Camilla had smooth, elegant hands. She wore no nail polish and no rings. Her face, when he glanced up, was a picture of irresistible confusion.

  “Camilla, I want you.”

  “Oh,” she said finally, gazing past him—just over his left shoulder—with such apparent concentration that Matt was forced to turn and look around to see who had caught her attention. The middle-aged man eating langoustines with his fingers and letting the juice run down his chin? The two women frantically fending off a lazy and disinterested wasp? Those pink and cream roses in their tub?

  Camilla, seeing nothing at all, was thinking. She didn’t even dare to examine Matt’s reasons for inviting her, but since meeting him, she had felt as if she were walking effortlessly along a narrow beam, convinced that it was less than a foot from the ground. It had all been so easy. Now, hearing the unmistakable meaning in his words, it was as if she had suddenly looked down and found that the beam was, in fact, a tightrope, and that it was stretched across the Grand Canyon.

  “I’m sorry. I say what’s on my mind, I guess.”

  He neither looked nor sounded sorry. Camilla dredged up the remains of her previous confidence. Loulou wouldn’t have been floored in this situation; she tried to think how her friend would react now.

  “You…want…me,” she repeated his words slowly, making them sound like a challenge. “Are you talking about tomorrow’s assignment?”

  “That’ll do for a start,” he said, the laughter lines deepening around his eyes as he realized that she was deliberately playing him at his own game.

  “You want me to do it? Be your ‘date’ for the day? Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “OK,” said Camilla, amazing herself even as she said it. She had meant to refuse outright. “I will. But I’d already made arrangements to spend the day with someone else. Would it be OK with you if they came along too?”

  Matt stared at her, astounded. “Oh, sure,” he managed to say eventually. If Camilla was bringing her goddamn boyfriend, he’d shoot himself quietly afterward. “Whatever you like, Mrs. Stewart. No problem.”

  Chapter Thirty

  It wasn’t the British Open, but it was just as popular with the crowds, who loved the easy, carnival atmosphere of Pro-Am tournaments and who had flocked in their thousands to see their favorite actors, singers, and comedians playing to the gallery, competing with the professionals and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

  Caroline, sprawled across the bed in Janet Reger charcoal-gray silk knickers and nothing else, watched the TV coverage of the tournament and admired the neatness of it all. The stars of stage and screen were enhancing their image, the pro golfers got free publicity, the crowds had a great day out, and the benefiting charities made oodles of money from the event. Everybody won; nobody lost. If only life were that easy, she thought, reaching for the remote control and turning up the sound. There was her mother’s favorite singer, partnering Tiger Woods and exchanging banter with those watching him. Tom Watson, on an adjoining green, was arguing comically with his caddy while two of the British Ryder Cup team built sand castles in the bunker. There, wearing a false nose and shocking pink plus fours, was the New York comedian whose name Caroline could never remember, playing against his fellow American, Matt Lewis. When she had been over in the States, she had been persuaded by a golf-mad girlfriend to go along to the U.S. Open Championship. Together they had followed Lewis’s progress through an entire round because Donna was convinced that he had winked at her before teeing off at the start. Tall, broad, and deeply tanned, he was a big man, yet effortlessly graceful. Caroline watched idly as the TV camera panned in for a close-up. He had his arm casually around the waist of a blond woman of about thirty, attractive but not as flashy as most of the players’ girlfriends. The woman smiled as he inclined his dark head and whispered something into her ear, then applauded enthusiastically as the comedian putted into the hole for a birdie. Matt covered first his own eyes, then hers, in mock despair. The crowd, easily amused, fell about laughing at the expression on his face, then applauded once more as a small, dark-haired boy ran over to the hole, retrieved the ball, and solemnly presented it to Matt.

  The scene switched to the fourteenth green, and Caroline, losing interest, turned off the TV and lay on her stomach with her chin resting on the cupped palms of her hands.

  Staring at the blank screen, she realized that witnessing people being happy together had a tendency now to make her feel faintly nauseous. It was a new symptom that, coupled with the cold, inner well of loneliness and the sensation that she was somehow enclosed within a clear, plastic bubble, soundproofed and separated from events going on around her, only seemed to confirm what she already knew.

  Her spontaneous marriage was failing as rapidly as it had come about. What had seemed like a smart move at the time—practically a fairy tale come true—was, in fact, not smart at all.

  She really had made a truly horrible mistake.

  And it wasn’t only sad, it was ridiculous, she reflected with impatience. Who, after all, would believe that she could possibly be unhappy, being married to a stunningly good-looking, sexually perfect man who as an added bonus was not only a rock star but a rock star with more money than she could ever seriously imagine?

  She had even received hate mail, for Christ’s sake, from teenage girls distraught by the news that their beloved Nico had taken a wife. How had she dared to do it to them? She didn’t deserve someone like him… They’d never forgive her for doing this to them…

  Caroline closed her eyes, willing the loneliness to go away. She should be happy to be one of the most envied women in Britain, but they simply didn’t know what it was really like to be married to someone who was kind, generous, funny, not to mention great in bed…and to feel that they, too, were sealed inside a plastic bubble just as silent and impenetrable as her own.

  At first, it had all been so thrilling. Maintaining the pretense that she had no idea who he really was had been easy. Listening to Nico’s reluctant explanations—as if he’d been half-afraid that they might put her off!—she had feigned astonishment, disbelief, and finally serious acceptance of the situation. She had assured him that it wouldn’t alter her feelings toward him, that she loved him for himself rather than for who he was in the eyes of the public, and that she was glad she hadn’t known about it beforehand because then he might have worried needlessly that her motives were less than genuine.

  Nico had been profoundly relieved, and she had congratulated herself on her performance. As long as she remembered not to
sing along with his old songs when they were played on the radio—and she knew most of them off by heart—she would be safe.

  And so far, she had managed to pull it off. She had also managed to become accustomed to the fact that almost anything she wanted, Nico could give her. Provided, of course, that those things were purely material ones.

  She knew she had behaved badly, deceiving Nico from the word go, but she had seen her chance and grasped it. And it hadn’t meant that she didn’t love him either. Because she did, with all her heart.

  Which was why the situation she now found herself in was so tragic and so very bizarre.

  Twisting the massive, square-cut diamond ring he had bought her from Cartier on their return to London, Caroline opened her eyes and gazed at it, trying hard to find pleasure in the glittering whiteness of the exquisite stone. Instead, hot tears threatened to spill onto her cheeks at the desperate tragedy of it all, because Nico was only able to give her almost everything. He tried, but nothing, nothing in the world could make up for the fact that, every once in a while, she would glance up and catch him looking at her as if she were a total stranger. And at other times, she recalled, he looked as though he knew only too well who she was, and was appalled with himself for having so impetuously made her his wife.

  How could she possibly be expected to make it a happy marriage when Nico was so obviously unhappy with her?

  By tilting her head sideways, she was able to see the time by the narrow, diamond-studded Rolex he had bought her last week. Ten past five. If she strung it out with a long bath, it was about time to start getting ready for the charity dinner they were supposed to be attending together at eight. Nico’s manager, making the best of what he clearly thought was a very bad job indeed, had decided to milk the marriage for all it was worth, and the gossip columns had been filled for almost three months now with photographs of her and Nico attending galas, concerts, and every party imaginable. It wasn’t that much fun—Nico always looked to her as if he would rather be lying on a bed of red-hot nails—but Monty Barton insisted that they be seen, and Caroline felt she might as well go along with it because anything was better than being alone at home, or alone with a husband who tried too hard but clearly didn’t want to be there.

  * * *

  Camilla and Matt were in bed. “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” exclaimed Matt, one strong brown arm flung across his face. “If the news ever got out I’d be ruined—do you hear me? My reputation would be in shreds.”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t,” Camilla assured him, smiling into her pillow. “And stop talking; we’re supposed to be getting a well-earned rest before tonight. I’m tired even if you aren’t.”

  “Matt Lewis, sharing a room with a delectable woman and sleeping eight feet away from her. Who the hell invented twin-bedded hotel rooms anyway?”

  “Hotels. They’re more expensive than doubles. Go to sleep.”

  “It just isn’t natural,” he complained, admiring the back of her neck from a distance. “Couldn’t I come into your bed and give you the best massage of your life? Hell, I wouldn’t take advantage of you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I’m asleep,” said Camilla, enjoying herself because she knew he didn’t mean it.

  Matt let out a tragic sigh. “This is like some goddamn Rock Hudson and Doris Day film. Don’t you have any respect for male hormones?”

  “Far too much respect to allow them into my bed. Sleep, Mr. Lewis. We have a long evening ahead of us. You may be used to walking around a golf course all day, but I certainly am not.”

  “You’re a terrible woman, Mrs. Stewart. A cruel and terrible woman.”

  “I am, I am.” Camilla pulled the bedclothes over her head. Beside her, Marty slept, his angelic cheeks pink, his dark hair brushed back from his forehead, and his closed fist resting against Camilla’s left shoulder.

  “Oh, Marty, Marty,” murmured Matt, watching them together. “You just don’t know how lucky you are.”

  * * *

  Roz still couldn’t quite believe what a mess she had become, yet at the same time she was unable to do a single thing about it. Here she was now, at six in the evening and still in the robe she had put on when she first got out of bed. Since she had had neither the time nor the energy to wash her hair, it stood up in ugly dark spikes all over her head, and since there were no beauty salons in Littleton Gray, her unwaxed legs displayed a regrowth of fine, dark hairs. She didn’t dare take a razor into the bath with her these days; it would be too tempting.

  “Shut up,” she muttered, lighting a cigarette and pouring black coffee with a shaking hand as Nicolette’s wailing increased in volume and intensity. Surely no baby in the history of the world had ever cried as much and as loudly as this one, and she seemed to specialize in timing her onslaughts to coincide with the exact moment when Roz herself had only finally managed to snatch a few minutes of fitful sleep.

  It wasn’t surprising that she had gone through three nannies in as many months, although Roz had decided that they were all incompetent fools anyway. She couldn’t be expected to know how to keep a baby quiet; she was new to all this, after all—but that was what nannies were paid for, and none of them had been able to do a damn bit of good either. The first had stayed for three weeks until Roz had screamed at her to do something about the bloody noise. The second had handed in her notice after only a fortnight, announcing that she was too used to Knightsbridge to be able to adapt to life in the country. A feeble excuse, Roz had told her coldly, for the fact was that she quite clearly didn’t have a clue about caring properly for young babies.

  Maria, the third, had lasted the longest—almost five weeks—and Roz had almost become friendly with her. Until one night when they had drunk half a bottle of brandy together and Maria had informed her that she was a complete mess.

  “You might not think it my place to say so, but you drink too much, you show no affection toward Nicolette, and you’ve let yourself go. Why don’t you visit your doctor?”

  Roz had eyed the woman with suspicion, outraged at her words. Maria returned the look with a conciliatory smile.

  “You’re quite right,” said Roz slowly, placing her brandy glass on the coffee table and rising to her feet. “It is not your place to say so. You’re fired.”

  It was good in a way that all three had left quickly, but the drawback was that it left her holding the baby—the eternally screaming baby—all alone. And Roz’s adverts in the slender weekly magazine that specialized in placing nannies with employers were fast becoming an off-puttingly frequent sight.

  “I need help,” she said aloud, standing in the messy kitchen with both hands clasped around her coffee mug. “I need someone to help me. Now.”

  It was chilling to realize that she had no one to ask. Loulou was probably her only friend, and she was now so engrossed in her own pregnancy that she wasn’t able to give Roz the help and support she badly needed. It was almost unimaginable; Loulou, the woman least likely to succeed in pregnancy, was adoring every single moment of it. She had been transformed, and Roz felt too ashamed of herself to admit to Loulou how hard, how exhausting, and how very unlovely having a baby really was.

  How about her mother, then? Marguerite had paid a fleeting visit, making very short work indeed of Roz’s last bottle of vodka and announcing airily, “You aren’t exactly flavor of the month at the moment, are you, darling? But don’t worry about it. Everyone will forget soon enough.”

  She had then mentioned in passing, while patting Nicolette’s chubby knees, that she was going to Antibes for a couple of months with her latest flame, a balding French financier. “I’ll let you know where we’ll be staying. Send me some photos of this gorgeous baby, darling. Let me know how she is. Good heavens.” Looking at her watch, she swiftly transferred Nicolette back to Roz and rose to her feet. “Is that the time? I must dash. Keep in touch, sweetheart. Lovely
to see you, and don’t worry—I’ll see myself out.”

  So much for her mother, now safely installed in a villa with her latest man. Roz dismissed her with a weary shrug and stubbed out her cigarette as Nicolette’s wailing increased. At least she had an appointment with the pediatrician tomorrow; hopefully, he would show at least some interest in her catalog of complaints. Maybe he could recommend something to keep Nicolette quiet—a sleeping pill, a strip of duct tape, or a slug of Remy Martin…

  And that was only if she had the energy to keep the appointment. Since losing her license for drunken driving on the day of the crash, traveling—even without the hassle of a baby—had become more of a problem than she had ever imagined possible. It had come as a grim shock to her, discovering that now she was unemployed she could no longer afford to order taxis without thinking. Littleton Gray was miles from anywhere, and since Roz refused absolutely to catch the only bus of the day, crammed with noisy teenagers and nosy housewives, she had to plan her excursions from the village with care. Tomorrow, as well as taking Nicolette to the hospital, she would have to fit in a visit to the supermarket and stock up with enough food and drink for the next fortnight.

  Struggling on alone was so much harder than she had ever imagined; she no longer knew how she was going to manage. Her only friend wasn’t available, her mother was a positive liability, Sebastian was too busy at present to escape from Zurich for even a couple of days…and finally, just to prove that bad things came in fours, there was Nico.

  Cruel Nico.

  After having pinned all her hopes upon him, his attitude had crushed her totally. So much, thought Roz with tired bitterness, for assuming that his so Italian, so family-oriented heart would melt at the news of Nicolette’s birth. He had refused even to see her.

  And after she had made the decision to call the child Nicolette too. The press had loved it, confirming as it did their endless speculations, renewing interest in the story of the fallen-from-grace TV personality and the singing star who had rejected her and so suddenly married someone else. Nico was a heartless shit.